


Practical Vampire

by wynnebat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Humor, M/M, POV Harry Potter, Pre-Slash, Vampire Harry Potter, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 21:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: After an attack on Hogsmeade, Harry becomes a creature of the night. It’s a big change, but at least the food is good.





	Practical Vampire

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by anonymous.

Harry whimpered audibly he opened his eyes to the dim light. His poor, poor head felt like it was going to crack open like an egg. He already knew where he was; by now, February of his sixth year at Hogwarts, he could identify the hospital wing blind, numb, and dead, which was exactly how he felt. He felt woozy despite not moving more than just his eyelids. On a scale of Hermione's paper giving him a series of papercuts for trying to cheat off her and Voldemort's visions, the pain was somewhere around being stabbed with a basilisk fang. But even without Fawkes there to heal him, Harry began to realize that the pain was slowly fading. His headache was the last to go, lingering like recompense for his bad decisions. 

"I knew I shouldn't have gone to the Slug Club," Harry muttered, trying to get his jaw to work properly again. Everything felt off. His gums were overly sensitive, his teeth tingly and strange. Beneath the covers, he was dressed only in a hospital gown. When he sat up and rested his back against the headboard, his head spun for a few long moments. "Ow."

"Harry!" came from beside him, and Harry didn't get the chance to look over to the visitor's chairs beside his bed before Hermione was already hugging him with enthusiasm. Things were even stranger than usual, because Harry didn't feel suffocated by all her hair or the tightness of her grip. He just appreciated the warmth of her skin, the beat of her pulse, the comforting smell of the blood within her veins. 

Which, well. 

Alright then. 

When Hermione pulled away, it was only to elbow Ron into waking up. His snoring was quickly replaced by flailing, then by sheepish apology and another hug. 

"I'm so glad you're okay," Hermione said. She was still holding onto his hand, as if Harry could slip away at any moment. Harry hoped that wasn't the case. 

Ron nodded. "Yeah, mate. Pomfrey was sure that—“

"That you'd be okay," Hermione interrupted. "Which you are, and that's all that matters, no matter what."

"Right, that," Ron agreed. "We support you." It sounded practiced, but sincere. 

"Support me in what, exactly?" Harry didn't feel reassured by the way Ron and Hermione shared a silent look, nor by the way Hermione looked so uncertain as she passed Harry his wand. 

"Could you do a spell?" she asked. "Any spell."

Harry's hand shook slightly as he raised his wand. There was only one reason why Hermione would be asking him to perform magic; there was a chance that he couldn't. Harry considered the idea inconceivable. He couldn't have lost his magic. He was the child of prophecy, the Boy Who Lived, the person on whom so many people were pinning their hopes on for Voldemort's defeat. He'd be forced to leave Hogwarts, his home, and return to the Dursleys forever. Harry could only imagine the Dursleys' reaction to all of this. They'd gloat about his return to normalcy, but it wouldn't be a respite from their hatred. They hated him for more than the crime of having magic; Harry just being Harry was enough. 

But as he forced his panic to ease, Harry began to realize that his holly wand still felt warm in his hand. A different sort of warm than Ron and Hermione's touch. It was—magical. 

"Lumos," Harry said, and he already knew what he would see. The spell that lit his way through the dark corridors of Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest at night, the spell that sent the darkness fleeing in its wake. Harry's spell lit the hospital room in a gentle light, chasing the shadows away and leaving Ron and Hermione's faces clear in Harry's sight. He could see them clearer than he ever had before, despite the fact that his glasses were missing. The looks of pure relief on their faces weren't assuring. "What's happening?"

"What do you remember from last night?" Hermione asked. 

"Slughorn invited me to one of his get-togethers and I couldn't find a way to say no," Harry said, thinking back. The professor had accosted him in a hallway, wrapping an arm around Harry's shoulders and leading him away. It had been a weak moment, and Harry hadn't been able to come up with a good excuse to get out of the meeting. He'd been hungry and tired after hours of studying, headed toward the great hall like a zombie with only one thing on his mind. Out of nowhere, Slughorn came like a false savior, steering him toward an impromptu gathering at the Hog's Head. "It was some kind of graduate-undergraduate mingling party. I spent half the night creatively trying to insult Zabini and the other half getting out of conversations. No one would serve me anything harder than a butterbeer."

"Good," Hermione said. 

"Pity," came from Ron, because he was a real friend. 

"And then..." Harry rubbed his forehead. His skin felt different. Harder, less yielding. When he looked down at his hands, they were very pale. "There was some kind of attack. I tried to help, but someone came up on me from behind." He reached back, running his fingers along his neck, trying to find the place he'd been stabbed. There was nothing. Madam Pomfrey must have already healed him. "Who stabs people in their neck?"

"Vampires do," Ron said. When Hermione gave him a dirty look, he added, "What? We have to tell him sometime."

"We could have eased him into it more," Hermione replied. She turned to Harry, who felt as though he'd fallen into one of Ginny's novels, the ones she hid from her brothers so that they wouldn't tease her. "Last night, you and a handful of others in the Hog's Head were turned by a rogue group of vampires, who may have been encouraged to storm the village by Voldemort. Professor Dumbledore is still trying to discover the truth."

"A handful?" Harry asked, swallowing. "The bar was packed."

"We have thirty-six confirmed dead, Slughorn included. The rest... we don't know. They might have made it out alive, or..." Hermione shuddered. They'd all heard the worst case scenario of lawless vampires stealing humans to feed from. "But you survived, Harry, you're alright." She fumbled in her robes for something and her hand returned with a lollypop. "Madam Pomfrey said to give you one of these when you wake up."

Harry took the lolly, feeling childish right up until he caught the scent. It was dark purple in color, but instead of grape, he smelled blood, and it was in his mouth before Harry even considered turning it down. "This is the best thing I've ever tasted." He wasn't a stranger to the smell of blood, from Dudley's punches to yearly encounters with Voldemort to the Care of Magical Creatures animals making their best efforts to eat him, but blood had never smelled so good. There was no part of him that was turned off by the lolly. A switch had been flipped in his head. What scared Harry was not his reaction to blood, but what else about him had changed overnight. "Hermione, you've researched vampires, right?"

Beside Hermione, Ron pointed at the stack of books by their chairs. There had to be at least a dozen books there. "Of course she has. She hasn't stopped all night, not even for snacks."

"Harry will need our help acclimatizing to this chance," Hermione said. "Oh, Harry, you know we love you, right? That this doesn't change anything? You don't have to do this alone."

Harry ducked his head, smiling and feeling overly warm despite the coolness of his skin. When he looked up, he and Ron exchanged a look that said all Hermione had, except without all that love business. "Thanks, guys."

And so Hermione began to summarize her findings with as much enthusiasm as she had for various other topics she'd lectured them on previously. There was a depth to her information and an urgency, and Harry listened better than he usually did. No longer could he ever hear the word vampire without it meaning something to him. He was more than just a wizard, now. But as Hermione spoke about his improved hearing, strength, and physical prowess, Harry didn't feel much despair. After Sirius' death, the prophecy, everything... Harry knew he would get through this. If he had any power at all, it was the ability to go on in the face of tragedy. And this? It wasn't a tragedy. The blood pop really was delicious. Ron cut in occasionally to add some facts he'd grown up knowing about vampires, including some general knowledge on vampire politics that Hermione hadn't reached yet in her reading. 

Harry poked at his hardened skin, wondering if Hermione's words really were true, and nothing but a few very specific types of wood would be able to pierce it. Neither would age pierce his skin, which Harry found mildly uncomfortable. It was Voldemort who cared about his mortality. "Wait, why doesn't Voldemort just become a vampire, then?"

Hermione shook her head with a smile. "Did you pay any attention to Professor Lupin's lectures? He had a fascinating series on the fact and fiction of vampire turnings. Nearly all vampires lose their magic during the turn, though they do gain the ability to do vampire magic like turning into a swarm of bats or using shadows to apparate. It's fascinating. The reason Voldemort would never chance it is that whether you keep your magic is a matter of simple luck. There's no way to ensure that it stays, or if there is, neither wizards nor vampires have been able to discover it for thousands of years."

"You're outrageously lucky, as usual," Ron said, though he looked relieved instead of jealous. Harry had come so close to losing it all. 

Hermione didn't disagree. "The last time a wizard kept his magic through the turn was three hundred years ago. His name is Sanguini actually, remember him from the Christmas party? Eldred Worple, the vampire researcher, introduced him to us."

Huh. So that was why Slughorn had probably invited him to the party. "I remember him. Luna spoke with them for half the night. She was really curious." Harry himself hadn't been as sociable, spending a lot of his time lingering near the food table—the one good thing about Slughorn's gatherings was the food—and avoiding Trelawney. "He seemed alright."

"He'll be your vampiric mentor, if he agrees," Hermione said. "Dumbledore is reaching out to him, though I don't know if he's responded yet."

"I wouldn't mind that," Harry said, speaking before thinking. It wasn't as though it was untrue, but. Interspersed between the more unpleasant memories of Slughorn's Christmas party, Harry remembered Sanguini as a tall, dark-haired, attractive man, who he'd been too attracted to, to talk to for more than a few minutes. Maybe along with these vampire powers, he would find a new well of charisma inside himself. There had to be a reason why vampire romance novels were so popular. Harry could be smooth. He could be sophisticated. Honestly. 

Over the next few days, Harry got accustomed to his new state of undead-ness. He found that as much as he liked blood pops, drinking actual blood was even better, though drinking from humans was messy and complicated. He decided to save that for the occasional dessert. As a magical vampire, he had control over his bloodlust (Harry preferred to call it blood craving) and never felt an unbearable urge to tear into Hermione and Ron's throats, thank fuck. In the meantime, the wizarding world had come up with all sorts of ways to keep from being rampantly fed on by the vampires in their midst. Blood sweets, synthetic blood potions, Knockturn Alley even had a blood bar with blood from all the animals one could think of. Harry immediately salivated at the thought of dragon blood. Dumbledore worked on it with Flamel, maybe he had a spare vial lying around…

He met Sanguini on the path from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts, vampires being unable to tolerate floo. Harry hadn't needed to be told so; something in him recoiled at the magical fires. At least his new vampire mentor was attractive. The universe was giving him that much at least. Sanguini was even more alluring now that Harry was a vampire himself. Like called to like, perhaps, and the lack of a heartbeat in the man's chest was strangely comforting. 

"Harry Potter," Sanguini greeted, his voice smooth and much more vampiric than Harry's. "I am sorry that your change was sudden and without your consent, but believe me, I will do everything in my power to make this transition easy for you."

Harry smiled, his fangs catching his bottom lip. "Does that include more blood pops?"

"It does."

"Then I'm sold. Eternal darkness, here I come."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


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